It Makes the Heart to Tremble
by SmellsOfElderberries
Summary: Lizzy Bennet always dreamed of exploring ancient ruins, but a family tragedy changed everything in a moment. Crown Prince Felix Guillaume of Darcia, known as "Darcy" to his few friends, has been burned too many times to trust again. Will a chance encounter unearth the long-buried secrets of both their hearts? ***CHAPTER 3 NOW UP!***
1. Prologue

_It makes the heart to tremble when you open an undiscovered tomb._ \- Zahi Hawass

When I was fourteen years old, I fell in love for the first time.

Looking back, there were so many reasons it was never going to work. He came from a pretty important family, for one thing. The distance between us was also a problem; I hailed from a small college town in northern California, and he lived roughly 3,600 years ago in Upper Egypt. The age gap probably would have been an issue too. But none of that mattered. I was young and in love, and for one glorious summer, Akhenhotep II was my world.

My sister Jane remembers it as the summer Boyz Not Bombz broke up, and for my best friend Charlotte it was when she got her first tattoo (purple dolphin, left ankle, obtained for the sole purpose of pissing off her mother). But for me, it was the summer that an intact tomb of a seventeenth dynasty pharaoh was opened for the first time in over three millennia. It might as well have been a unicorn for how rare that is. But for all that, I might have passed those summer months without giving dear Akhenhotep a second thought, had it not been for an old colleague of my father who was overseeing the dig. He invited my father to come check out the find, and Dad brought me along.

Archaeological excavations look nothing like the movies make them out to be. There were hardly any death traps, for example, and a surprising shortage of murderous reanimated corpses. The work was hot, exhausting, and tedious, and I loved every minute of it. My fellow excavators, most of them college students, nearly all of them volunteers, shared my enthusiasm. We were light and cheerful in defiance of the tyrannical Egyptian sun. By day we worked, at night there was music and beer (root beer for me). I learned how to catalogue artifacts and how to hot wire a Jeep. In the midst of people half a decade older than myself, I was more of an equal than I had ever been among my own classmates back home. At the tomb of a long-dead Egyptian prince, I wasn't the "weird kid" anymore. I had become a valuable member of an unstoppable team.

But best of all was the work itself. To hold in my hands the treasures of a teenage king who lived and ruled and died while my ancestors were still drowning people in bogs, to hold that window into the distant past, that was magic. If I could learn to look at a jasper scarab or an alabaster jar and see that ancient boy monarch, learn the secrets of his world... well, I could bring him back from the dead. This was a power worth having.

Eventually the summer had to end. My boy king and I parted ways; he to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, and I back home to Longbourn, California. Nevertheless, in the two months we spent together, Akhenhotep had helped me find my calling. But even as the years passed, and my initial infatuation deepened into a steady commitment, I never forgot the magic of that first summer. After all, there's nothing like first love. It would be another ten years before another prince-

But here I am getting ahead of myself. Best start at the beginning. This is the story of how I fell in love for the second time. And it all started with a death, a handful of coins, and an unexpected journey.

Oh, and alcohol. But what great story ever started with root beer?


	2. Chapter 1

"Lizzy, I need you to talk to your father! He's being stubborn again and it's just tearing me apart inside and he doesn't even _care_ and-"

"Mom!" I hissed into the phone. "I told you I was helping to proctor finals this week. You promised to only call if it was an emergency."

"It _is_ an emergency, and don't you take that tone with me, young lady! You have no idea what I went through to raise you girls, five girls all on my own, and with your father always traipsing off on some field trip or conference or-"

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry!" I stole a glance behind my shoulder at the half-open classroom door, behind which roughly sixty students were engaging in a flurry of last-minute cramming. I had about five minutes before my mother's idea of an emergency became a threat to my job. Knowing my mother, I'd need at least thirty. "So what's the emergency?"

"The banquet in honor of Sir Roger, of course! I keep telling your father that he needs to stop joking around and accept their offer before they ask someone else, but this morning he said he's _not_ joking and that he has no intention of accepting, and when I said I already bought our tickets he said that I should just go and give the speech myself, and of course I told him that I _can't_ just show up and give a speech about Sir Roger when I never even met the man, and he said..."

I held the phone several inches from my ear, staring at the hallway clock and dancing from one foot to the other as the seconds ticked perilously away. Interrupt Mom too many times and she'd give me an earful about that. Hang up and I was declaring World War III.

"...and so I told your Auntie Phyllis that I didn't care about the price of the eggs so long as they were gluten free, but anyway I couldn't stop thinking about what an _opportunity_ this would be for all of us, and here your father is just _throwing_ it away, and-"

Okay, enough was enough. Just a few more "and"s from Mom and I'd be on the wrong side of three o'clock. "Okay, all right, got it, I'll talk to him before I leave. Yes, I think so too. Yes, I'll let him know. No, I can't guarantee, but I'll do my- Yes, of course he cares about you, he's just- What? No, almond milk is already dairy free, it's just called- Yeah, that sounds great. No, I'm looking forward to it, really. Okay, see you then. Love you too. Bye." The conversation reaching a cease fire, I hung up before she could change her mind.

Ninety minutes, sixty-four Scantron forms, and at least one undergraduate existential crisis later, I found myself jogging up the four stories of the dilapidated Social Sciences Building to my father's office. With the elevator perpetually out of service (and terrifyingly rickety when technically in service), working in that building had put me in the best shape of my life.

I understood Mom's reasons for wanting Dad to accept the invitation. And, although I had no intention of becoming her henchman, I did have my own two cents to put in.

"Hey Pops," I called, pushing open the door, "got a minute?"

Dad was at his desk, and to an outsider it might have appeared as if he were grading papers. I knew that I would be the one grading those papers over the weekend, and that he was really just skimming over them for things that we could make fun of together after I was done.

"Don't tell me," he said without looking up. "That four-wheeled coffin of yours needs the Frankenstein treatment again, doesn't it?"

"A statistically safe guess, but last I checked, the Blue Death was still among the living."

"Would that not make it the Blue Undeath?"

"Perhaps, but that's not nearly as catchy. Poetic license, you know." I pulled the folding chair from its hiding place, shoved my bag under it, and sat down. Dad kept things at standing-room-only to discourage visitors during his office hours. "I just finished up for the day, so I thought I'd come check in on my favorite world expert on Darcian history."

"Hmph. And quite a pool of candidates you have to choose from."

"Hey, being a rare specialist doesn't make you less lovable. Just think of yourself as an academic panda bear."

"So, an evolutionary dead end on the verge of extinction. A fair comparison, I suppose," he said with a wry smile.

"But a popular one." I tried to think of a natural way to segue into my real reason for being there. And failed. "So..." I began in what I hoped was a nonchalant sort of way, "have you and Mom decided what you're going to do this summer? 'Cause I've been thinking about-"

"The budget cuts? Don't worry, my dear. Every spring Dr. Leigh threatens to shut us down, and every autumn sees me back here academically toilet training eighteen-year-old adults."

"What? No, it's-"

"Deplorable, I know. Would you believe, one of my future Nobel laureates actually referred to the 'LeBron's Age' in her final essay? I'm tempted to think she meant 'Bronze Age', though perhaps there is some ancient basketball-heavy culture of which I had been hitherto uninformed."

"Dad."

"We must always keep an open mind, after all. Even in my advanced years, my young charges are always imparting new wisdom to me. For example, were you aware that the current Crown Prince of Darcia is 'sexy as hell'? I must admit I had remained blissfully unaware of that fact until recently, and might indeed have gone many more years without-"

"DAD."

"Yes, yes, Lizzy, I know." Dad threw his hands up in defeat. "I can well guess why you're really here. Your mother wishes to conquer my will on the subject of the banquet, and has employed every weapon in her usual arsenal to do so. And, having met thus far with defeat on every front, she has at last resorted to her nuclear option: you.

"However," he continued, "as I have already heard every irrational reason why I ought to accept, and as there cannot be any rational one, I suggest you and I skip ahead to the part where I say, 'As compelling as those arguments are, my mind is quite made up,' and leave it at that. We both save breath, I make it to my meeting with Dr. Leigh on time, and your mother remains assured that I am a selfish brute who lives to destroy her happiness. Everybody wins."

"True, Mom does want me to convince you. But actually," I said, leaning forward, " _I_ think you should go. Not just for Mom, but for a lot of reasons. Some of them rational, even."

He leaned back. "That should prove an interesting challenge. I am all ears, my dear."

"Well," I began, ticking each point off on my fingers, "first, Mom's actually right that you haven't taken a real vacation in ages, and it would be nice to see London again."

"If I wanted that badly to fight belligerent drunks down urine-soaked streets in bad air, Hollywood is a lot closer than London. And the food is better."

Ignoring him, I continued. "Second, it's been at least three years since you promised to visit Uncle Tony and Aunt Camy, and you never did."

Dad grimaced. "Your mother promised, you mean. I would never do anything so unnatural as to _intend_ to visit anyone."

"Third, this is your chance to get the last word. You know, you could tell everyone some embarrassing story about him." I did a conspiratorial eyebrow-wiggle. "Share with the world some of the scandalous lad exploits of the late great patron saint of Oxbridge Archaeology. Wouldn't that just frost their asses?"

He seemed to consider that one. "Well, there was that incident with the vicar and the geese..."

"Finally, they're offering to reimburse you for travel expenses, and there will be free food at the shindig. And if that isn't good enough reason to go," I folded my arms and sat back, "I don't know what is."

Dad shook his head. "Ah, the curse of an intelligent child. Not to be content with the pursuit of full wardrobes and empty-headed men, she must torment her own father with such astute reasoning as this.

"But, my Lizzy," he said, fixing me with his best professory look over the top of his glasses, "you forget from whence that intellect derives. I flatter myself that I know you better than that. There is a fifth, unspoken reason for wanting me to eulogize Sir Roger Collins, and I suspect I know what it is. But life, you will find soon enough, bears little resemblance to those heartwarming made-for-television productions your mother watches. The Old Man McAllisters of the world, Yuletide change or heart or no, will rarely use their coal-mining fortunes to buy new iron lungs for the orphanage. And going back to Oxbridge isn't going to change what happened last time I was there."

 _What did happen?_ is a question I had asked more than once. One that had only ever received vague answers about "university politics" until I had learned to stop asking. Still, it was a mystery that had always tugged at me. What had possessed Dr. Abraham Bennet to leave behind homeland, family, all he had ever known, and a brilliant career at the world's premier university, to join a tiny archaeology department at the smallest University of California campus? Something had happened between my dad and his childhood best friend, I was sure of it. Something that had cast a pall over the rest of his life. And I was sure that if he could just go back there and settle things, somehow, the pall might be lifted.

However, the mark of any successful strategist is knowing when to press your attack, and when to retreat. "Well, it's your decision," I answered with as much indifference as I could muster. "I think you're throwing away a rad opportunity to get free grub and stick it to the man at the same time, but what do I know?"

"You know too much! Which is why I should have hooked you on television when I had the chance. All that reading of yours has been terrible for my health. But," he continued, standing up and gathering his papers, "I _do_ know something you _don't_ , something you'd have learned a full ten minutes ago, had you truly been here to 'check in on' me as you claimed."

"Oh please, as if..." The retort died on my lips as my eyes met his. I had seen that expression on his face before, and last time I'd seen it, it was preceded by the words, "Might you be interested in a little summer job in Egypt?"

"What is it?" I asked, my heart beginning to stomp against my ribcage. "What happened? What's been found? Oh my God, it's not Egypt again, is it? Tell me it's Egypt again!"

"Sadly, no, not Egypt," he said, shaking his head and stuffing the papers haphazardly into his briefcase. "In fact, it's just a little find that probably wouldn't interest you. I shouldn't have brought it up, forget I said anything. So, are we still on for dinner tomorrow?" He picked up his cane and limped towards the door, leaving me to trail after him into the now-abandoned hallway, the door automatically locking shut behind me.

"Dad! Stop! Wait!" I almost shouted. He was teasing me, and thoroughly enjoying every minute of it, but I was far too excited to play that game. "It's a find, I just know it. What is it? Tell me tell me tell me-"

"All right, all right!" he interrupted, laughing. "Well, if you're up for a bit of dull reading..." He fished a folded piece of paper from his pocket and held it out for me to snatch away. It was the print out of an email, and I read it as we walked, my eyes eagerly wolfing down its contents. Then I reached a line that halted me in my tracks. I could feel my jaw hanging open.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dad's mischievous grin. "So, what do you think? Discovery of the year?"

I somehow managed to find my voice again. "Of the decade, more like! Maybe the century. Look! Darbisi Culture building foundations, jadeite coins, a figure of the Three-Handed Goddess... and in _Kent_ , of all places? This is huge!"

Dad switched from humor to ironic indifference. "True, that does suggest the early Darcians may have been troubling our forefathers a bit earlier than we thought."

"A _bit earlier?_ Dad, this indicates a Darcian presence in Britain in the _late Neolithic._ This changes everything we thought we knew about early Darcian expansion. It means the Darbisi people were seafaring, just like you've always said! It means Sir Roger was _wrong_. It means-"

"Now, now, let's not get ahead of ourselves, my dear. What it means is that Oxbridge Archaeology is going to have a very busy year, and that the next edition of our textbook is going to contain a new subchapter."

"You have to go now. To Oxbridge. Seriously, you _have_ to. Ohmygosh, you need to tell them you're accepting before they put two and two together and change their minds. Here!" I stopped and fumbled for my phone, furiously Googling the number for the department. "We're going to call and tell them you're going. Freaking slow Wi-Fi..." Dad laughed again.

"Lizzy, have you forgotten the earth is round? If you'll forgive my cynicism, you're unlikely to find anyone answering calls after midnight."

"Oh jeez." I shoved the phone back in my pocket. "But you're going to call first thing tomorrow, right? Maybe you should call around our midnight, just to be safe."

"Lizzy." He turned to face me, placing a hand on each on my shoulders. "My Lizzy. Your passion for our field is one of your most admirable traits. Not in a small part because it frightens away weak-willed young men so I don't have to. But," and here was the professor look again, "you need to stop trying to salvage my career and start working on your own. Now, _when_ are you going to go back to school?"

The high I'd been riding over the discovery burst like a balloon popping. "Dad, don't..." I faltered, "don't change the subject. We were talking about you."

"Yes, and we've talked about me quite enough for one day. And now we're talking about _you_. It pains me to see you wasting your life dusting off old bones in the lab when you could be dusting off old bones in a field somewhere. You could be so much more. Is this how you want to spend the rest of your life?"

"I..." The back of my throat had grown tight during my father's speech. What could I say? Surely he knew why I couldn't go back yet. He had to know.

"Well." He turned away again, looking a little embarrassed. "I'd best be off to the annual gloom-and-doom cocktail hour with Dr. Leigh, and you should go do whatever it is that young, unattached women do in their spare time. Perhaps birdwatching, or a rousing game of Parcheesi."

I managed a weak smile. "Are you kidding? This is the twenty-first century. We do cow-tipping these days."

"Then do that, and afterwards make sure to stop by that party Donna won't stop talking about, or else I'll truly never hear the end of it."

"Oh crap, Maria's graduation! That's today?"

"Time truly does fly. Now wish me luck, my dear. And if not luck, at least the strength to stay awake."

We went our separate ways, he to the dean's office, I to the staff parking lot. Bringing up my academic status had been a rotten trick, but it had worked, and I'd completely forgotten about Oxbridge. I supposed I'd deserved it though, for being so pushy over Dad's decision. As I walked through campus and the beautiful Northern California spring day, I welcomed the feeling of elation as it seeped back in. The new discovery was a total game changer. There were Darcians, or at least proto-Darcians, sailing as far as the British Isles in the 30th century B.C., maybe even earlier! Or at least their artifacts and building style ended up there somehow. Was there some sort of trade route between them and the pre-Celtic people? Did the Darbisi break off from an older culture that- oh, there were so many questions! What I wouldn't have given for a chance to answer them.

Swimming through such rosy thoughts, I reached my worn-out old Pontiac and reached in my bag for the keys. Or tried to for about a second before I realized my bag was not slung over my shoulder where it belonged. In a flash, I saw it sitting under the chair in my dad's office. Where I'd left it. "Oh, for fuck's sake," I muttered, the high bursting once again. Any other day I'd have killed time in the library until Dad's meeting was over and I could borrow his office key, but Maria's party was in a little over an hour, and Charlotte had practically begged me to go. There was nothing for it but to crash the meeting. Luckily I'd known Dr. Leigh since I was four, and anyway the annual budget meeting had never been anything more than a stern lecture over bad coffee.

A brisk walk brought me to the much nicer and newer building that housed Dr. Leigh's office. Making my way down the hallway, I took pride in passing several artifact display cases that I had personally put together. It may not have compared with fieldwork, but Dad couldn't claim I wasn't doing anything useful.

The door to Dr. Leigh's office stood slightly ajar, and I hesitated before it, suddenly unsure about interrupting the meeting. Wouldn't it look pretty unprofessional? The dean was my boss too, sort of. I could hear the voices of Dr. Leigh, my dad, and Dr. Long, the university's only other archaeology professor, coming from inside.

"...bullshit, Jerry, and you know it!" Dr. Long was saying. "If the school's in so much trouble, why the hell do you have such cushy digs here?"

"Look, I don't control where the money goes, Linda. But I've had to make some very difficult decisions, and ultimately I have to choose what's best for the students."

"Oh, what a load of crap. What about those hideous bronze statues in north campus? Are those better for the students than an education in antiquities? Was buying them last semester part of those 'very difficult decisions'?"

"Like I _said_ , those concerns are out of my hands. I was given a number, and I had to make it work somehow. I'm just a soldier in this man's army."

"Oh my God, Jerry, are you even listening to yourself? What about _your_ job?"

Wait, _his_ job? What were they talking about? What was happening to people's jobs?

"I don't see how that's relevant to this-"

"We are the _only_ UC campus that offers a bachelor's in archaeology."

"That's just the thing, Linda, nobody does that anymore. It's all graduate work now, and Berkeley has a far superior program anyway. Enrollment in UCL archaeology has been declining steadily for years now, you must have noticed that. It's just not necessary. Your department is not necessary."

I suddenly felt cold all over, and everything seemed very far away. I leaned on the wall for support. What was happening? Was I really hearing this? Why wasn't my dad saying anything?

Dr. Long seemed to have the same thought. "Abe, how can you just sit there and not say anything? Are you hearing any of this? Say something!"

There was a pause. Then I heard my dad answer, sounding more tired than I'd ever heard him before. "What would you like me to say?"

She spluttered. "What- you mean you're not going to argue? What, are you in cahoots with this guy now?"

"Far from it. But I'm afraid there's precious little you or I can do. This has been a long time coming, and you and I both know it."

"Well, I'm glad Dr. Bennet can listen to reason, anyway."

"Unbelievable. Freaking unbelievable."

"I'm sorry, Linda, Abe, but the decision has already been made. Longbourn Archaeology is being cut."


	3. Chapter 2

Now, I've never been a believer in horoscopes. But it doesn't take a star chart to tell when the universe is going out of its way to crap all over you. For instance, on the day my father and I both lost our jobs and an entire era of my life came to a sudden screeching end, I was required to attend a party for an entire high school cheerleading squad, held at the home of my best friend. Which was unfortunate, because Charlotte's stepmom is a strict teetotaler, and I really, really, really, really, really needed to get drunk.

"I just don't get it," I mourned into my fourth Sprite. I'd read somewhere years ago that you can get a buzz off decaf coffee, as long as you convince yourself it's caffeinated. I was hoping the same principle worked with alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, but so far all I felt was a stomach ache. Thinking fervently of vodka, I took another swig.

"I mean, he acted like the meeting wasn't any big deal, but then he was all, 'it's been a long time coming.' So he knew? When did he decide it was okay to just _lie_ to me like that?" I'd been unable to confront him after the meeting, and had ended up walking the three miles from campus to the Lucases'. As far as I was aware, he had no idea that I knew.

"He's your father, of course it's okay for him to lie to you," said Charlotte. "It's every parent's sacred right to lie to their children. I lie to my future kids all the time by telling them they're going to exist someday."

"Haha. But okay, maybe he doesn't have to tell me everything. But wouldn't it be a nice idea to, I don't know, give me a little head's up that I'm about to lose my job? Even if he only thought it was a possibility?"

Charlotte frowned over her diet Pepsi. "Liz, I enjoy a good conspiracy as well as the next girl, but have you considered you may be overthinking this just a bit?"

"I don't know what to think! Just four hours ago I was thinking about neolithic European trade routes-"

"Seriously?"

"-and now I'm unemployed and have to deal with the fact that my own father knew about it and didn't warn me."

"Hm." She stared ruefully across the street at her parents' tri-level custom-built house, which her dad had affectionately named "Lucas Lodge". Charlotte called it "Yellings", which was probably more accurate. We had been driven outside by the combined assault of her three youngest siblings squabbling over bags of chips and turns at the X-Box, a pre-graduation pep rally that had spontaneously combusted in the dining room, and roughly twenty thousand blue and silver balloons festooning every conceivable surface. Perched on a waist-high brick wall on the other end of the cul-de-sac, it was a relief to be out in the cool evening air. However, even outdoors we couldn't escape the two gigantic banners of "Congrats Class of 2015" and "Go Porpoises!" screaming at us from the front porch. Occasionally a sort of collective howling emanated from within the house.

I saw Charlotte's hand twitch instinctively towards the pocket which, up until about six months ago, would have held a pack of cigarettes. Life hadn't been kind to her lately. The previous Christmas, her sporadically employed boyfriend had gotten so baked that he'd tried to have a barbecue in the living room of their apartment. The fire department was called, Kyle moved back home to Cleveland, and Charlotte was left with a hefty bill when their insurance refused to pay for the damages. The day she moved back in with her parents, she quit smoking. "I have to stop now," she'd said at the time, "or I'll smoke myself to death before Easter."

"Look, Lizzy," she said now, "what I'm suggesting is that your dad has a nihilistic streak a mile wide. Knowing him, it was probably a sort of, 'Oh well, stands to reason that the last part of my life that doesn't completely suck would finally be taken from me, guess it was inevitable, insert witty Britishism here,' sort of thing. I wouldn't take it personally."

Damn it, that _did_ sound a lot like him. "Maybe," I conceded. "But how could he just give up on that part of his life so easily? Charlotte, he _made_ Longbourn Archaeology. What is he going to do now?"

"Okay, let me stop you right there," she interrupted, holding up her hand. "See what you just did there? That's your problem."

"What, caring about other people?"

"Being a martyr to everybody else's problems all the time! You just got laid off from a decent job in your dream field, and you're worrying about what your grown-ass father with like forty years of experience being a career know-it-all is going to do with his life? I don't know, he'll probably just retire and write boring books about dead people or something."

I concentrated on my now-empty cup. The placebo experiment had been a dismal failure. "He can't retire. The mortgage isn't paid yet, and Lydia maxed out my mom's credit cards, and-"

"Again. Not your circus, not your monkeys. Lizzy, you have got to stop worrying so much about what other people are doing. Weren't you just telling me about how pestered Abe over that stupid speech? Honestly, why is that so important to you?"

"Because..." I searched for the right words to describe a feeling I'd never spoken out loud before. "Because maybe if he went, he might get a tiny bit of recognition for his achievements for once. I just hate that Sir Roger Collins got to be this... _celebrity_ , and my dad, my family, got shit. And it's all because Sir Roger got him drummed out of Oxbridge somehow, years ago, but Dad won't say anything about it. He made discoveries too, you know. Important ones. It's just," I shrugged, "I don't know, it sucks. It's not fair."

"Yeah, well." Charlotte made a dismissive gesture. "You know what else sucks and isn't fair? Life."

"Thanks, _Mom_."

"It's true, though. Live long enough and you'll figure that out. Fair isn't even a thing, Liz. You need to learn to accept that. You'll just go crazy if you don't." She was looking toward the house again, but somehow it looked like she wasn't seeing it. Her gaze seemed to rest on something a thousand miles away. "Anyway," she continued, turning to me again, "you need to stop trying to be everyone's white knight. Focus on your own problems for once."

"I am focusing on my own problems! What were we just talking about? And anyway, I am not trying to be anyone's white knight, or any other color of knight, thank you very much."

"Yes, you totally are. Why are you not working on your master's?"

"Not you too!"

"Seriously, though. I've known you for, what, fifteen years? And for almost the whole time it's been 'King Tut' this and 'OMG recent discovery' that and 'I just can't wait to grow up so I can waste the best years of my life standing waist deep in mud and thousand-year-old garbage'. You wouldn't shut up about how much you wanted to leave this town and explore the world. And now here you are doing precisely none of that."

I could feel my throat tightening again. "Come on, Char, that's not... Jane still needs me."

"At the risk of sounding like a bitch, when are you going to decide that Jane doesn't need you? It's been two years..." Charlotte trailed off as she caught sight of something behind me. I turned and was grateful to see a familiar cherry-red Corvette round the corner into the cul-de-sac. Charlotte's dad climbed out and started pulling something out of the trunk. "Oh, for crying out Pete's sake," muttered Charlotte, "I knew I was forgetting someone. Pray to Zeus he doesn't see us."

I grinned in spite of myself. "Sorry, I'm a bit short on sacrificial bulls at the moment. Should we just make a break for it?"

"No, stay put. He's like a T-rex, if we move he'll see us for sure."

"You know, that's probably not actually how Tyrann-"

"Lizzy! Charlie!" I looked up and saw Bill Lucas waving with one arm, a stack of shiny silver boxes swaying precariously in the other. I waved back.

Charlotte groaned. "Gifts for the princess, no doubt. Honestly, I got hell for every 'B' I brought home, but Maria gets a ticker tape parade for scraping a 2.8."

"Your parents are probably just glad she didn't join a cult," I offered.

"Define 'cult'," she said, and winced as another cheer erupted from the house. It intensified as the thudding of heavy bass music wafted our way. "Aaaand the DJ has finished setting up. Glorious."

Bill yelled again and motioned for us to come over. Charlotte's hand twitched again, but she threw her cup into the neighbor's yard and hopped down from the wall. "It could be worse, you know," she said as we walked back to Lucas Lodge. "You still have options, at least."

"You say that like you don't."

"I'm single, almost thirty, and in debt up to my eyeballs. I'm sleeping on a futon in my stepmom's craft room. You tell me how many options I have."

I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. "You could always start a cult."

"Pssht. Only if you bring the Kool-aid."

That night Charlotte drove me back home to the little two-bedroom apartment I shared with my sister Jane and her son, Noah. Charlotte and I at least shared sleeping accommodations in common, though in my case it was voluntary. Now that my nephew was four years old, it was important he have his own room, and even more important for Jane to have hers. And anyway, fold-out couches aren't so bad once you get used to them.

The windows were dark by the time we got back. "Look, I'm sorry I can't help you get the car tonight," Charlotte said as I got out. "It's just my shift is in six hours and..."

"Don't worry about it. It'll be fine," I lied. "I'll just have Jane take me by in the morning. Security won't care, and for some reason no one ever tries to steal it." That part was true anyway.

After Charlotte drove off, I could hear the mostly-full bottle of Chardonnay calling to me from the fridge. By then, though, I found that I just didn't have the heart for it. Instead I stayed awake, thoughts swirling like leaves through my head far into the night, and sleep didn't find me until the first cool light of dawn.

* * *

Being a heavy sleeper is a curse when you have a 7:00 AM class and only three alarm clocks. However, it is a blessing when you live with a preschool-aged boy. By the time I woke up the next morning, Noah was already glued to an episode of _Galactic Mutant Monkey Pirate Troopers_ , and the merciful scent of pancakes was wafting in from the kitchen. Somehow my prospects seemed less bleak in the light of breakfast and Saturday morning cartoons.

Getting up, I winced and attempted to massage my neck out of its forty-five-degree angle. I had fallen asleep on the couch without unfolding it into a bed and was now regretting that decision. On screen, the Orange Trooper was engaged in intense hand-to-hand combat with some villainously moustachioed antagonist. I plopped down on the floor next to Noah.

"Ooh, good one!" I said as the Cyan Trooper jumped in and walloped Mr. Moustache over the head with her bō staff. This got a fist bump from the Orange Trooper. "Who are they fighting, anyway?"

Noah shoved another handful of dry cereal into his mouth before responding. "Otto Odio," he answered in between noisy bites. "He's Nadia Nastina's twin brother."

"Why do they have different last names? Is she married? Is _he_ married and just really progressive? Or is one of them using a stage name or something?"

Shrug. "Ionno."

Now the Violet Trooper was going one-on-one with some sort of tentacled pig monster. "Well this is a nostalgia trip. This show has barely changed since I watched it as a kid."

Noah looked affronted. "No, you didn't. _Pirate Troopers_ is Noah's show."

"Nope. Sorry, buddy," I said, filching a few pieces of ring-shaped chocolate cereal. "I'm afraid I was watching these guys kick butt before you even existed."

"Nuh-uh!"

"Uh-huh!"

"Nuh-UH!"

"Jaaaane!" I yelled, "tell your offspring about how we used to watch _Pirate Troopers_ together!"

"Moooom! Auntie Zizzy's being weird again!"

"And how we had the doofiest crush on the Indigo Trooper!"

 _"See?!"_

Jane appeared. "Oh, you're awake! That's good, 'cause I doubt I could have eaten all these blueberry pancakes by myself."

"You had me at 'all these'." I followed Jane like a puppy, leaving my nephew to carry on the battle of good versus evil without me. There was already a full pot of coffee sitting on the kitchen counter. Tired as I was, I could have floated toward it all cartoon style. "Have I mentioned you're my guardian angel?" I sighed.

Jane laughed. "Just remember that next time I leave you with Mr. Dinosaur Expert on your day off."

"Hey, you're never too old to learn every possible nuance of the life cycle, habits, geographic range, and possible scale and/or feather color of the Styracosaurus. Besides, I like to see a budding interest in the sciences."

"Well, you're amazing with him," she said, pouring a cup, "so if anything, you're _my_ guardian angel."

"Aw shucks, Ma."

"I mean it, I really owe you, Lizzy. We both do."

I smiled through the familiar twinge of pleasure and guilt, then set to work shoveling down mouthfuls of berry-laden miracle food. Jane has always had a way with cooking that transcends space and time, a culinary Aphrodite, if you will. Back in my university days, the contents of her care packages had become a sort of dorm currency. I annihilated the contents of my plate and quickly reloaded, while Jane sipped her coffee and watched with her usual expression of concerned amusement.

"Actually," I said when my supply had become exhausted, "if you want to call it even, you can always help me pick up the Blue Death from campus. Charlotte gave me a ride last night," I said in answer to her inquiring look. The look continued. "...I left my keys in Dad's office."

"Oh. Sure, of course. But why didn't you just have Dad get the keys for you?"

I sighed, the weight of my worries returning in the absence of breakfast. "It's a long and kind of shitty story. But I guess you'll find out tonight anyway, so..." I got up and checked to make sure Noah was still adhered to the screen. He was now immersed in some sort of cartoon about talking construction tools. I returned and sat down. "You know that annual, end-of-the-semester budget meeting that Dad says is no big deal?" I took a deep breath. "Well, it was a big deal."

* * *

Author's Note:

Thank you, everyone, for your reviews and feedback!

I'm not going to be in the habit of posting Author's Notes at the end of chapters, but this one feels necessary, perhaps for obvious reasons. Thank you for your patience waiting for this chapter. My husband and I welcomed our little girl into the world last autumn, and as she's grown and become more demanding, it's been harder for me to find time for writing. However, we've settled into a more consistent sleep schedule now, so I'll be continuing the story with more frequent updates. My long-term goal is to update weekly, though that may be a bit ambitious for the moment. We'll see! Shoot for the moon, and if you miss, you'll die a horrible death in the cold vastness of space. Or something like that. In any case, rest assured that I am dedicated to finishing this (eventually novel-length) story.

I really didn't want to post this chapter until I'd completed the next. I'm so impatient to get to the part that introduces Mr. (Prince?) Darcy! But it's been so long since I last updated, and it's been slow going with Chapter 3. So I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and in the meantime, know that I'm working diligently on completing the next one as soon as possible without sacrificing quality. I promise we'll see our favorite Mr. TallDarkAndBroody soon. Thank you for your patience.

As always, all constructive criticism, both positive and negative, is greatly appreciated. I want to write one hell of a great story for my readers, and I am so grateful for your help in making that happen. Thank you!


	4. Chapter 3

By the time Jane and I rolled into the crowded driveway of our parents' house that evening, we had done everything possible to prepare for the shitstorm of cosmic proportions that surely awaited us. The tale had been told, wine procured, and Noah safely dropped off at Lucas Lodge, to munch on pizza rolls and watch Austin and Brandon try to kill each other in _Duty Beckons_ before passing out on the couch. To say I was insanely jealous of my nephew at that moment would have been an overstatement, but not by much.

There was one thing that had been nagging at me all day, and that was the lack of any sort of hysterical phone calls, texts, emails, smoke signals, or psychic screams from Mom. As much as I had been dreading hearing the (admittedly justified) keening of my mother over my father's sudden unemployment, the radio silence was downright eerie. It could mean only one of two things, neither of them good. Either she was in such a state of panic that she hadn't gotten around to calling either Jane or me yet, or Dad hadn't told her. From past experience, both were about equally likely. Past experience also told me that I'd find out roughly 3.5 seconds after stepping through the door. Something would happen, anyway.

Now, before I go any further, let me state for the record that I love my family. No, really, I do. But loving someone and enjoying being around someone are two different things. For example, I love skunks. I think they're adorable, fuzzy, underrated little creatures. But as much as I may appreciate the smelly little bastards, that doesn't mean I'd like to have dinner with a family of skunks every Saturday. Or ever. Okay, that may have sounded like I just called my family a bunch of skunks, but... Well, let's move on with the story, shall we? Anyway,

"I just have a hard time believing that Dad would keep anything that important a secret," said Jane. We had parked but were not in a big hurry to go in. "Especially from _you_. You two have always been so close." Coming from any other kind of sister, that statement might have been tinged with jealousy. As it is, Jane was born without the capacity for ill will the way some people are born without the ability to smell things. Which had long made it my duty to sniff out bullshit for her.

I shook my head. "Yeah, but how could he not have had any idea? Maybe it's all part of a plan. I know Dad wants me to..." I almost said 'go back to school' but checked myself just in time, "to get a better job. Maybe this is his weird, fatherly way of shocking me into it."

"But do you really think he'd give you no warning? He knows we have a hard time getting by as it is."

"I don't know what to think. But it is what it is. In any case I'm going to find out tonight."

"Well," she said after a pause, "if he did know, I'm sure he must have had a good reason for not saying anything."

As we approached the door, we heard something that sounded an awful lot like shouting coming from the other side. That was nothing unusual, but still the knot in my stomach tightened. Before either of us could lay a hand on the doorknob, the door swung open and our youngest sister, Lydia, collided with Jane, causing her to drop the bottle of wine she was carrying.

"No! Not the wine!" I cried.

"Oh, oops?" Lydia checked her Louis Vuitton bag for damage and then giggled. "Hey, you guys are, like, just in time. Mom's, like, having a freak out attack! Anyway, I'm off to Latte Da. Bye!"

"What's Mom freaking out abou...?" The question died on my lips as Lydia skipped out to her powder blue Volkswagen Jetta and zipped away. Jane and I stood in a puddle of shattered glass and Pinot grigio. "I'll... I'll get this," I sighed.

"No, it was my fault, I should have been paying more attention. I'll take care of this."

"No, it's _not_ your fault, but..." That knot was tightening with every passing second, until it felt like my insides were going to turn inside out. I sighed. "Yeah, could you?"

Jane looked genuinely relieved. "Of course. You go in and see what's going on with Mom. And talk to Dad."

She didn't have to tell me twice.

If Lucas Lodge was a war zone, setting foot in my parents' house was like entering a warped mirror dimension ruled by the iron fist of a goatee'd Martha Stewart. My mother's most recent Pinterest abomination, a wall clock made of "repurposed" CDs, was the first thing to greet me as I stepped into the living room. If an inanimate object can look embarrassed by its own existence, then this clock looked embarrassed. It also wasn't working.

Mom's lamentations were clearer now, and I could catch bits and pieces of them as they wafted down the stairs. Phrases such as "how could he" and "what am I going to" seemed to confirm my fears. If I could get just a bit closer it would-

" _LIZZY!_ " My heart leaped out of my chest and ran away to start a new life in Argentina. The shrieking figure of my second-youngest sister pounced at me. She was sobbing and plastered in a strange greenish goop.

"Oh my _God_ , Kitty!" I said once my blood pressure had stabilized. "Holy cannolis, you scared the crap out of me! What's wrong?" ... _this time?_

"Liiiizzy," she wailed between sobs, "I need _helllllp_. Mom made me (sob) take over in the kitchen even though she (sniff) _knows_ I can't cook, and I was doing my _best_ but (sob) then the sauce started _exploding_ on me, and then something in the oven caught on _fire_ and-"

"Caught on FIRE?" I had become aware of a burning smell and dashed to the kitchen, all thought of parental drama banished as visions of Charlotte's charred apartment danced through my head. The oven door had been flung open to reveal a rave party of fire within. A pot of unidentifiable and awful-smelling green sludge was boiling over on the stove, _splopp_ inginto the flames below, which gladly gobbled it up and belched out an acrid smoke in return.

"Ohhhh shit, grease fire, grease fire!" I heard myself yell, and in a moment I was rifling through the pantry, yanking ancient cans of soup and newer boxes of gluten free pasta off the shelves. "C'mon, baking soda, where the hell does she keep the _fucking baking soda?_ " A jar of pink sea salt shattered on the tile floor.

As I frantically searched for a way to keep my childhood home from becoming an insurance claim, I failed to hear Kitty re-enter the kitchen until I heard her shout, "The fire is in the _oven_ , Lizzy! What are you _doing?!_ "The next sound I heard was running water. Spurred by some primal response, I spun around to see Kitty filling up a large glass with water, and then raising it to pour onto the flame.

" _NO!_ " I leaped forward, knocking it out of her hand. The glass sailed in a beautiful arc across the kitchen, soaking Kitty and landing with a loud _THUD!_ against the refrigerator followed by a _KRISSH!_ on the kitchen floor. Suddenly I realized. The fridge! Ignoring my sister's renewed wailing and the crunching of broken glass under my shoes, I jerked open the refrigerator door and found my Holy Grail lying behind a mostly decomposed cabbage. "Gotcha!" I grabbed the box of baking soda, tearing off the top and shoving my screaming sister out of the way.

What followed remains in my memory a blur of fire and baking soda and foul-smelling smoke and tears ("In other words, another Saturday evening at the Bennet household," as Charlotte would so helpfully summarize it when I told her later), and through it all I'd be lying if I claimed to have had anything like a coherent thought other than _aaah aaah fire fire fire diediediediedieeeeeee_. However, if I had been able to think anything, it would have been something like, _What a wonder and a blessing it is that my mother is not here to witness this right now, sometimes the stars really do align to help you even though your kitchen is on fire_. And the universe, knowing that would have been my thought, helpfully shifted those lucky stars out of the way.

"Kitty, would you stop making so much noise in here? You know how much stress I've been under and I-"

Mom froze.

Kitty froze.

I froze.

And the gears of time ground to a shuddering halt as my mother's eyes went from my sniffling sister, to the glass shards and food detritus on the floor, to the still-boiling-over concoction on the stove, to the smoke, to the fine dusting of white powder that now covered everything, to me. And then they groaned back into motion again.

"Oh. My. _GOD_ ," Mom gasped. " _MY SALMON LOAF!_ "

* * *

Alas, there was no saving Mom's salmon loaf, and it and the weird bubbling goop (which I later found out was supposed to be a non-dairy cream of kale soup) were ceremoniously interred down the garbage disposal. Jane had finished her sweeping of the front porch only to resume it at the scene of the attack. With the spectre of my mother's cooking no longer looming over the evening, I assumed Jane would whip up something incredible from four ingredients she would find in the back of the freezer, or something. That, at least, gave me something to look forward to later. I left the three of them in the kitchen - Mom berating Kitty for allowing her culinary masterpiece to combust, Kitty blaming the whole thing on Lydia, and Jane insisting that it was all somehow her own fault - and went upstairs to find my dad.

I had managed to glean two important things from my mother. A) She had been on the phone, complaining at my Aunt Phyllis about the Oxbridge banquet, when I walked in the house; and B) she had no idea that her husband was recently unemployed. Suddenly, the very scenario I'd been hoping for became the greater of the two evils. As much as I'd been dreading having to deal with the meltdown, it now seemed worse to have it still on the horizon.

Making my way to the end of the hallway, I found the study door closed as always. I stood outside for a moment and mentally rehearsed the speech I'd prepared. I don't remember all of it now, but it had a good bit about honesty and broken trust and forgiveness and getting through the hard times ahead as a family, and probably lots of other lofty ideals that I hoped, rather than believed, to be attainable. "Knock knock," I called from outside.

"I'm not in here!" came the reply.

Clever. But I knew his Achilles heel. "Then I guess this big plate of oatmeal cookies is going to have to eat itself." The door burst open at about the word "going".

"Well, if that's the case, then I suppose I can..." Dad's face fell when he saw I was empty handed. He fixed me with an accusing stare. "You said you had cookies."

"You said you weren't in there."

"Harumph. Well played, daughter."

I followed him in. My father's study was remarkably under-furnished, the only part of the house utterly devoid of any knick-knacks, DIY craft projects, or bizarre home improvement techniques (since I'd left home, the floor of my old bedroom had been covered in pennies and lacquered over). Wall-to-wall bookshelves, a Mr. Coffee, a battered old desk, and a single chair were its only inhabitants. As with his office at the university, there was no second chair, similarly for the purpose of discouraging visitors.

"Here we find ourselves again, my child," Dad said, stumping back to his desk. "But if you think you can extract more news of miraculous discoveries from me this way, it will not work. I follow a strict one-major-find-per-decade policy. Unless," he continued, easing into the chair with a slight wince, "you are here on another errand of mercy from your mother, in which case, it will certainly not work."

"Dad," I blurted, "I know about the department closure." I hadn't expected my voice to catch the way it did on the word _closure_. "I was outside Dr. Leigh's office, and I heard him talking about it." So much for the speech.

"Ah," he said. I waited for him to say something else, but he apparently had nothing more to say. He seemed resigned. Unconcerned, even. A new emotion bubbled up within me.

"So when were you planning on telling me?" I demanded. "Tonight? Next week?"

"Lizzy..."

"It's been almost forty-eight hours, and you couldn't have possibly sent me, I don't know, even a _text_ to tell me that I won't be making rent next month?"

" _Lizzy_."

"Were you just going to let me show up first day of summer sessions to find everything gone?"

"ELIZABETH."

I stopped. Dad was hunched over his desk, in that moment looking more exhausted than I'd ever seen him. It was in that moment that I realized, for the first time, that my father was getting _old_. It's funny how time just keeps stretching out like a rubber band, until it suddenly snaps and hits you.

"Hey, I'm sorry," I said, feeling embarrassed and slightly ashamed. "I'm just, you know... this is a lot right now. I didn't mean to..."

"No, you _did_ mean to, and you had every right to mean to," he said, polishing his glasses. "I ought to have told you sooner. Much sooner."

"But why didn't you?"

"My dear, why do we ever put off doing the unpleasant? I'd anticipated our funding would be cut years ago. When no such cutting occurred, it was easier to pretend it never would. I'd built my little hermitage in a fool's paradise, and yesterday's meeting was the eviction notice."

"And now we're homeless."

"I am," he said. "As for _you_ \- but you heard what Dr. Leigh said about you."

"About _me?_ " This was unexpected. "No I, uh, I heard that the department was getting cut, and then I sort of. Ran away." I assumed I'd run, anyway. I actually had only a hazy memory of fleeing the building. I didn't really know where I was going until I was halfway to Charlotte's house.

"Well, if you had eavesdropped upon the _entire_ meeting, you would know that your services will still be needed. Until fall quarter, that is." Seeing my confusion, he continued. "There are all your dusty old trinkets to brush off and send away to their forever homes, after all."

"Of course, the artifacts!" My babies! I hadn't even thought about what would happen to them. I made a mental note to never have children. So that gave me until at least, what, August? It wasn't an ideal amount of time, but I could probably-

I shook myself out of it. "Okay, so I have a reprieve. But what are you going to do?"

He looked up sternly. "Elizabeth Laverne Bennet, you let me worry about that."

I winced. "Was the middle name really necessary?"

"Yes. And let it be a warning to you. Take care of your own problems, and let this old man take care of his own, or I will invoke your middle name as many times as it takes to subdue you."

"Pretty sure that's a violation of the Geneva Convention. Anyway, you won't take care of your problems. You'll just sit around and wait for death."

He smiled. "Then let me do _that_."

"Will you at least tell Mom?"

"Of course."

"Soon?"

"...Yes."

"Tonight?"

" _Dad_."

"I'll... try," he said. "If I have an opportune moment."

"Just wait for Mom to stop talking for a minute, and then jump in with it."

"My dear, if I wait that long, she'll learn the news from my obituary."

* * *

Jane had once again worked her culinary alchemy, magically transforming the eccentric contents of my mother's pantry into a mouth-watering quiche lorraine. Of course, I was far too tightly wound to actually eat any of it, but it did smell amazing.

"Oh. My. GAWD!" Lydia gasped, plopping into her chair. "Is that a QUICHE?"

"Um, yes," said Jane, nervously. "I hope that's okay."

"I have been OBSESSED with quiche lately!" Lydia whipped out her phone and took a picture of her piece. "Megyn had, like, SIX quiches from Palomino's at her birthday party last week? And, like, Jocelyn asked if any of them had shrimp because she's, like, allergic? And we said no but Krystyn handed her, like, the one with seafood in it? And her lips swelled up so much that she couldn't even TALK, and her stepdad had to pick her up. It was SO funny!"

Jane gasped. "Oh no, that poor girl!"

Lydia shrugged. "Nah, she's, like, cool with it now. She posted on Flitter that her nurse was, like, this totally hot guy? I was SO jealous!"

"Jane," interrupted Kitty with a note of panic, "is that bacon? You _know_ I'm a vegetarian! I wish someone would remember that!"

"Yes, Kitty, I did remember, which is why I didn't add any bacon. Those are bell peppers."

"Oh," said Kitty, somewhat put out. "Well, at least _someone_ cares." She glared at Mom.

"And just what is _that_ supposed to mean, young lady?" Mom demanded.

"You were making Salmon again tonight!"

"Oh, Kitty, fish isn't meat." Mom made a dismissive gesture. "And in any case, you made sure we didn't have any, so I don't see how _you_ get to complain."

Kitty started to tear up. "That's not fair, you _know_ I can't cook!"

" _Any_ way," interrupted Jane with a tight smile, "um, Mary! Have you finished your screenplay yet?"

Our middle sister, Mary, was staring at her phone. A few moments passed before she looked up. "Hm?"

Jane smiled encouragingly. "You know, the one you were telling me about last week? The the one about the people trapped in the elevator?"

Mary blinked a couple times before the question registered. "Oh. No, that one's on hiatus. I'm working on something else now."

"Oh? How exciting! What's it about?"

"Well..." Mary put down the phone. "It starts out with these five screenwriters, and they get trapped in a garden shed and-"

"OH. EM. GEE!" squealed Lydia, who was staring at her own phone, "Tanner Fleet and Enrique Modas broke up AGAIN!" Kitty and Mom got up and rushed over to see what Lydia was looking at, all three of them talking over each other. Mary snorted and went back to her phone. Utterly defeated, Jane picked at her dinner and sighed.

Only Dad and I had remained silent throughout dinner, nothing unusual there. He had brought a book to the table and was currently hiding behind it. I cleared my throat until he looked over it. _Any day now,_ I said with my eyes. _Don't make me do this_ , his face answered. _You promised!_ I shot back. He sighed and put down his book. Standing up, he cleared his throat. Everybody stopped what they were doing and looked up.

"If the personal lives of those two... marine biologists, I'm assuming? can wait another moment, I have some news of my own to share." My heart started pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. _Why did I want him to do this again?_ I thought. _Oh, that's right, I am an idiot._ "However," he continued, fiddling with his glasses, "I fear it may be somewhat... unwelcome."

Mom made a sound somewhere between a snort and a cough. "Well, as long as it isn't about the banquet, I don't see how it could be that unwelcome. I can't imagine anything more unwelcome than having to hear more about the opportunity that you just _threw away_ , as if it were only _your_ decision to make, as if _I_ didn't have a say in the matter, as if you didn't even care about how _I_ felt at all, I swear I'll be _sick_ if I hear another word about it!"

"That's a shame, my dear," Dad answered. "If I knew you felt that way about it, I never would have accepted the invitation."

Mom looked about as gobsmacked as I felt in that moment. "You. You _what?_ "

He _what?_

"Yes, I'm afraid I'm committed at this point, as it would be a bit rude to back out now. But there's no reason you have to come along, if that's how you feel about it."

"Oh. Oh! OH! Abe, you ANGEL!" Mom shrilled, and leaped forward and threw her arms around Dad's neck. "Ohhhh, you had me going there, you silly goose! See what a wonderful father you have here, girls? He's going to take us all on vacation to England!"

Dad jumped a little. " _All?_ " he squeaked, then caught himself. "Uh, yes. All. We'll... all go."

Kitty and Lydia jumped up and started chattering about all the "hot Uni boys" they were going to flirt with at Oxbridge. Mary rolled her eyes and stormed out of the room, muttering something about her art. Jane looked from our sisters, to our parents, to me with an expression of surprised helplessness. I felt frozen in my chair. I attempted to glare at my father, but he studiously avoided my gaze. When it became clear he wasn't going to follow that up with, _But the bad news is, I'm unemployed now and we'll probably lose the house and also we don't have the money to pay for eight round-trip tickets to halfway around the world, hope you understand._ When it became apparent that no such confession was coming, I asked, "Do you have any _other_ exciting news to share, Dad?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," he said. "I still have about thirty-six ungraded exams to send home with you tonight. I know how much you were looking forward to them."


End file.
